One week ago a horrible, unimaginable thing happened. Twenty children and six adults were murdered during their school day. I don't need to remind you of this, I know it is on people's hearts and minds. I couldn't find words. I joined Suzannah in praying these prayers, I read Sarah's lament and spoke it out loud, followed by many of my own, and I said yes over and over again while crying though Jennifer's words on reaching her limit (for now).

And a week later, here I am. Like many, I am here getting ready for celebrating with my loved ones. But I can't stop thinking about those people whose lives have been shattered these past few weeks. Not just in Newtown, but in hospitals, in back alleys and in shady hotel rooms. Not just in North America, but in war zones across the world and in refugee camps. In factories, in brothels, in mining operations.

What are they doing?

Tonight we will celebrate with friends by remembering Jesus coming down to earth as a baby. It's solstice, and for me, I cannot separate light from Jesus. He is where the hope is for me. I'll be thinking of all those families and praying for them, yes I will be. I will be praying for things that don't seem possible like healing and hope and forgiveness. But as a follower of Jesus, as a Christian, Jesus doesn't want me to stop there. When things like Newtown and war and child prostitution and poverty happen in our world, Jesus calls 'Follow me.' 'Help me.' 'Let's do this beautiful thing, let's spread my kingdom.' He's mourning more than we are, all this death and brokeness and abuse and he wants peace more than we do too.

So yes I will be baking cookies and playing lego with my kiddos and singing silent night at church. But I will also be examining my life, my family's life. We will be thinking alone and discussing all together. Looking for ways to follow Jesus in spreading God's kingdom of peace on earth. Looking for ways of growing in love, and peace, in joy and faith. I mean prayer and I mean writing out my heart for him, yes, those things are important. But I also mean practical, changing our lifestyle things and getting our lives entangled in the lives of others, trying to love better things.

This is one reason why I need Jesus. He shows me a better way. He shows me healing and grace and stepping beyond myself to love others. He brings good news for everyone. All people everywhere. And in ways I cannot comprehend, he invites us to join him in bringing this to others.

He is the light.

Sometimes you start writing not sure where you are heading, but you just need to put out there. That you are picking up laundry and emptying the never ending dishwasher loads and taking kids to the dentist. And how that is fine, it really is. But also how in December, when it is dark both when you wake up and when you exit the grocery store at 4:15, and when there are five totally overcast days to every one kind of sunny one, that it also isn't. It just isn't totally fine. And one of the kids is sick again, in our family where we hardly get sick, but this fall has been one sickness after another. Now I am my 87 year old grandmother because I am less than one paragraph in and writing about how sick someone is. I'm feeling tired at the thought of three more meals to be made and fed and cleaned up tomorrow and at how I will most certainly be up multiple times with someone who is sick tonight. And how it is too cold to swing outside and look at the stars with anyone who might wake up. Life in the 30's has been described by Madeleine L'Engle as 'the tired thirties' an idea which has much been explored and agreed with by following writers. To me, yes, I see it, I see the tired, I feel the tired. Us mom's with several small children, we all do I think, no matter how we balance this mothering gig with everything else we need to do. But I also feel there is something more, something lurking in these mid thirties, that could shadow slowly like octopus ink.

It can start with the daily monotony, with your own shortcomings, as another day passes with too much TV and too much bickering. Too much caffeine and too little sleep. Too much to do and too little time to do it. Too much work, too little results.

But that isn't where it really blots out the light.

It blots in the friend having a double mastectomy and chemotherapy with two little girls at home. In the news of another family who lost their own little love, gone way too soon. In the poverty and the mental health issues and in the babies who have no one who makes them their priority and in the excess. I could go on.

Because this is where the thirties trump the twenties every time. The world is wider and our worlds are more vulnerable and we just see more bad things happening.

The thirties can threaten to be a godless dark pit.

So I call my husband to say I have to do this, then I text a friend to come with me, or I don't. But either way I grab my running shoes and head to the track. Thank you sweet baby Jesus for the indoor track, because we have a lot of snow, and it gets dark early and it is very cold outside. And thank you for kindred spirits who like to run too. The talking about not much but anything you want, is one of the best kind of freedom. My feet take me around the track over and over, and I'm not a marathoner, I still can't run too far or too fast but with each step I feel lighter. So I do it again the next night. Because right now, this is what is saving me.